Research & Development Engineer - Robotics, Machine Vision & Precision Automation; PhD

Research & Development Engineer
- Robotics, Machine Vision & Precision Automation (PhD)

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Job Title:

Research & Development Engineer
- Robotics, Machine Vision & Precision Automation (PhD)

At TE, you will unleash your potential working with people from diverse backgrounds and industries to create a safer, sustainable and more connected world

If your PhD sits at the intersection of robotics, perception, controls, and real hardware, this role is designed for you. TE Connectivity’s Passive Optics organization is building the precision automation needed to manufacture the next generation of optical interconnects for AI and hyperscale computing. You will work on problems where coordinate frames, motion, vision, sensing, process physics, and software all have to agree in the real world — not just in simulation.

This is an intentionally high-bandwidth early-career role. You will work directly with a senior technical authority, first learning and codifying advanced methods, then taking increasing ownership of new robotics, machine-vision, measurement, and equipment concepts. The goal is not to maintain yesterday’s equipment; it is to invent and prove the methods that become tomorrow’s equipment.

As optical connectivity moves to higher density and tighter precision, manufacturing becomes a robotics and measurement problem as much as a product-design problem. We need machines that can find, align, inspect, join, and verify extremely small features repeatably — and we need the science behind those machines to be understood well enough to scale. Your work will bridge fundamental engineering with production reality: build the model, write the algorithm, instrument the experiment, integrate the hardware, and prove the result.

* THIS POSITIION IS 100% ON-SITE AT THE ROCHESTER FACILITY*

• Kinematics & Geometry:
  Develop forward/inverse kinematics, rigid-body transformations, coordinate-frame architectures, calibration methods, and geometric error models for precision equipment.
• Motion & Control:
  Design and evaluate motion strategies, servo behavior, trajectory generation, active alignment, and closed-loop control for precision positioning tasks.
• Calibration & Registration:
  Create robust methods for hand-eye calibration, sensor-to-machine registration, multi-axis alignment, and recovery from drift or reconfiguration.

• Machine Vision:
  Develop 2D/3D vision methods for feature detection, pose estimation, inspection, alignment, and process feedback; select and optimize cameras, lenses, illumination, and acquisition strategies.
• Sensing Architecture:
  Integrate cameras, position sensors, force/other sensors, and process signals into coherent measurement systems; use sensor fusion and estimation where it adds value.
• Precision Metrology:
  Develop methods for repeatability, reproducibility, uncertainty, drift, calibration, correlation, and machine-to-external-metrology validation. Treat measurement as an engineered system, not just a sensor choice.

• Closed-Loop Process Control:
  Attack hard problems in precision alignment, fiber handling, stripping/cleaving, laser joining/welding, inspection, and other processes where motion, sensing, timing, and process physics interact.
• Next-Generation Equipment Concepts:
  Take new equipment ideas from first principles through benchtop prototype, algorithm development, hardware selection, integration, and technical proof-of-concept.
• Prototype to Scale:
  Partner with equipment, manufacturing-process, optics, mechanical, controls, and software engineers to turn…